www.upmrfid.com: Taking the pain out of joint replacement: You are a leading provider of orthopaedic implants to preeminent surgeons around the world. Every day, you get hundreds of calls from hospitals and clinics requesting same-day shipment of the Express Care sets of titanium and cobalt chrome joint replacements that will help end patients pain and give them back their mobility. In addition, hundreds of loaned inventory sets return, requiring rapid replenishment and reshipment. You want to streamline inventory processing, but increasing the efficiency and accuracy with which you process and package these vital parts is critical. Could RFID help you pick up the pace?
DePuy Orthopaedics, a division of Johnson & Johnson, used RFID to automate the manual processes workers used to check and prepare high-demand Express Care sets for shipment. The company used an end-to-end solution, developed by ODIN technologies, which includes the UPM Raflatac UHF Gen2 DogBone RFID tags, to reduce the processing time for each set from 10 to 30 minutes to less than one minute. Instead of scanning boxed items individually, workers now replenish Express Care sets and load completed sets onto a conveyor belt in an RFID scanning tunnel. Boxed items and completed sets are both RFID-tagged, enabling easy verification of orders prior to shipment.
The solution provides DePuy Orthopaedics with reliability and scalability under challenging conditions. Tags must be read accurately in the presence of metal, parts are not necessarily placed uniformly in boxes, and most orders require same-day processing and shipment. In addition, workers receive very little formal training and may be temporary hourly help. Consequently, the solution had to be accurate, scalable and simple. In addition, the solution provides 24 x 7 monitoring and remote diagnostics, deploying configuration and firmware changes electronically from a secure data center leveraging the proprietary EasyMonitor™ Suite from ODIN technologies.
Dave Johnson, Director of Distribution, is a believer in RFIDs ability to optimize the processing of high value inventory: Its very important that the components in the Express Care sets are accurate. The surgeons are depending on the right parts to be there when they make those cuts. RFID has provided DePuy Orthopaedics with accuracy rates that Johnson says are amazing. In addition, it allows him to focus workers on higher-level tasks. I see RFID as a competitive advantage, because now I can take some of my resources and allocate them to other areas, says Johnson. His team in the United States has been blazing a successful trail for RFID within Johnson & Johnson that has helped gain them international recognition for their accomplishments.
With its rapid, dependable tracking and verification capabilities, RFID is allowing DePuy to get a jump on inventory management, improving its efficiency and customer service. Whats good for surgeons is also good for DePuys bottom line: according to Johnson, the return on investment (ROI) was achieved in well under a year. Results you can count on with every shipment? Now thats a leap-ahead advantage in any industry.
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- Post Time: 04-09-16 - By: http://www.rfidang.com